RalliSport Challenge

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While it certainly isn't the simmy title we're used to on the PC, this Xbox port is a good console style rally racer.

By Randy MacGruder

We've seen several PC games get ported to the Xbox with mixed results, but here's a case where the reverse is happening. No, not Halo (yet), but rather Microsoft's RalliSport Challenge. I played the Xbox version pretty much all the way through, and I had very mixed feelings about the game on that platform, being more of a purist in terms of simulation accuracy. When I heard about the game being ported to the PC, one of the things that made me hopeful was that perhaps the Force Feedback technology of PC controllers would be brought to bear to improve the gaming experience. I also wanted to see if other enhancements, such as the missing in-car view, would make its way into the PC.

But what is RalliSport Challenge anyway? Well, if you haven't seen the Xbox version, it is a fusion of traditional World Rally Championship-style Rallying (WRC), complete with pace notes barked out by a co-driver, and Rally Cross style head to head racing with 4 cars racing around closed circuits of varying terrain (usually ice, gravel and asphalt). As a bonus, you also get the Hill Climb event reminiscent of the annual multi-stage, treacherous climb to the top of a mountain, making sure you don't miss a hairpin and fly off a cliff in the process. The cars are very much the same ones you are used to seeing in Rally events, such as the Subaru Impreza, Mitsubishi Lancer, Peugot 206, Ford Focus, Ford Escort, and even the new Volkswagon Beetle. A decent selection of vehicles with WRC-style paint jobs is available, but you have to unlock a fair number of them by progressing through the career mode of the game. Some of the more notable cars are actually older cars, which have significantly higher horsepower than today's WRC cars, which are around 300hp turbocharged 4WD cars.

What really sets Rallisport apart from other Rally games is the graphics. Take a look at the screens accompanying this review and take note, especially if you have the latest and greatest offerings from nVidia (which sponsors the game on the splash screen). If you want to show off awesome bump-mapping features, real time window reflections, sun glare, outstanding lightsourcing, and vegetation which looks and feels real instead of just being 2D sprite cutouts, this is your game. The bushes and grass even bend and sway as the car plows through them. The cars are similarly polished with respectably high polygon counts, a few deformable parts and breakable glass, as well as visible occupants inside the cars. Exhaust smoke can be seen billowing out of the tailpipe even as the car awaits the race start. Ice never looked more real, with bump mapping to drool for making uneven reflections look exactly like the real thing. The game is high resolution and high detail. The trees which fade into the distance become softer in what appears to be a gentle hazing effect rather than the usual pop-up disguising fog. The draw-distances are never a worry. The track terrain is very unpredictable. Some of the faster straights feature undulation and bumps all over the road's width, making the left or right suspension droop or get airborne, depending on the location of the dip/bump and the angle at which you hit it. It all looks very rich.

Some compromises were made that I'm not too thrilled with. The spray out the back of the car, be it snow, dust, or mud, is very unimpressive. Compare real Rally footage of a plume of dust flying out from under a Rally car in the desert to what happens in the game and you certainly won't be fooled into thinking you're watching the real thing. The dust wisps out from under the car. For mud, you just see a few small chunks occasionally getting kicked up, and there's almost nothing in the way of snow spray. There are also no water splashes in the game.

All the beauty that is there does come at a price. While my P4 1.7 Ghz with GeForce 4 was able to roll along at 1024x768 and high details nicely when I was running Rally events, the 4-car Rally Cross style events were awfully chopped up. I cranked down resolution and graphics detail, and ultimately a combination of lowering the sound quality of my Audigy Gamer board and dropping the graphics quality to the 'medium' setting gave me back the frame rate that multi-car racing was stealing away. Oh, and I also turned off the other drivers' car sounds, very reluctantly. Everything ultimately smoothed out for both modes, but I wish the game was better balanced graphically between the between solo and competition races. Since 4-car Rallying is a requirement to complete career mode, you may find yourself tweaking the sound and graphics to get the frame rate to the point where you can drive competitively.

The sound of the engines is decent, but lacks oomph on the low frequencies. The cars whine and there are some nice sounds of the car sliding on ice, squealing on asphalt, or crunching through gravel, but given the amount of WRC footage I've watched, it just doesn't add up to a compelling experience when compared to the real thing. I think they could have done a better job capturing all the various 'extra' noises of a car kicking up gravel onto the underside of the car, sputtering as the rev limiter is hit while lifting the accelerator and so on. Stereo is made good use of, especially when surrounded by cars if you have the other car sounds on. It is extensively used during replays as well. You'll become quite acquainted with the sound of breaking glass as it seems that it takes very little in the way of bumps to cause one of your taillights to shatter in sympathy.

My first experience just running a practice stage with my Logitech Wheel and Pedals brought groans of disappointment. The console-quality vibration system from the Xbox was brought over untouched. So, your powerful Force Feedback wheel gets treated like a simple Xbox gamepad. The revs and bumps cause the wheel to vibrate obnoxiously. The game does not supply ANY spring rate to the controller. After running several tries with the springs totally slack, I went out to the Logitech controller configuration dialog in the Control Panel and forced a centering spring to always be active, and this helped immensely. I also had to tweak the dead zone and sensitivity settings of the wheel to make the steering response tolerable. It still feels somewhat disconnected compared to other PC sims, but at least this bridges the gap somewhat.

Damage can happen, and you can flip your car and it's quickly reset to the track (you can also hit a button anytime to do a reset). The game will automatically reset you if you stray too far off course, and this can sometimes be almost absurdly close to the track. The damage doesn't seem to affect your driving at all. It's basically cosmetic. There are no tear away panels or doors here.